Student QOL

I learned in law school, and it is still true today, that it is the color of the victim, not the perpetrator, that is the one of the greatest determinants in criminal sentencing. 

they have no idea what it is like for black parents to have to prepare their children to deal with a public that often still judges them by the color of their skin.

when you walk out of the safety, protection and loving arms of our home, you are walking while black, and only our prayers can protect you then.

We also studied this phenomenon in the real world. In one study, we followed 153 college students over five weeks. During stressful times, like final-exam week, students who believed that willpower was not limited reported eating less junk food and procrastinating less than students who did not share that belief. They also showed more academic growth, earning better grades that term than their “pessimistic” counterparts.

Furthermore, when we taught college students that willpower was not so limited, they showed similar increases in willpower. They reported procrastinating only once or twice a week instead of the two to three times a week reported by students in a control condition, and they cut down on excess spending, going beyond their budgets less than once a week instead of once or twice a week.

At stake in this debate is not just a question about the nature of willpower. It’s also a question of what kind of people we want to be. Do we want to be a people who dismiss our weaknesses as unchangeable? When a student struggles in math, should we tell that student, “Don’t worry, you’re just not a math person”? Do we want him to give up in the name of biology? Or do we want him to work harder in the spirit of what he wants to become?

The important part of my process — the part that separates this obsessiveness with the pathological variety — is that when my interval is done, I stop. Inevitably, I’m still well short of an ideal output, but what matters to me is not this specific outcome, but instead the striving for perfection and the deliberate practice this generates. In other words, I want to keep getting better, not necessarily make this particular project the best thing ever.